One last set of budapest pictures

1/10/07 - hey there all...well...its been a while since i last updated...getting close to two months and i am sorry about that...i hope in the new year things will happen more frequently...as i look back on 2006 i smile to myself because once again it was "quite" a year...from getting a job in romania...to traveling all over the states...to catching up on people's lives...and even visiting hungary....just a great time overall in my opinion :) its a great life :) this will be my last set of pictures from budapest...now that they are close to three months old....oops....the picture above is the heroes monument in hungary....mostly to past rulers and conquerors...its an amazing site at night as you can see...we actually rented an apt close to here so catherine and i got to see it all lit up every night....

budapest has this amazing market...called the central market...close to the center of town...go figure...if you have never been to hungary they are known for garlic and PAPRIKA in their cooking...above is one of the stands that just made me smile with all the garlic and peppers...woo-hoo...a country that likes spice...it was a nice change from the blander styled romanian food...one of our favorite restaurants was called paprika and below is a shot of it :)

this restaurant had amazing garlic soup...my mouth starts watering just thinking of it...and they did mushrooms in many tasty ways....the waitresses laughed when they saw us a second time in less than five days...they knew we loved it :) and you have to love the candles in the chianti bottles on the tables...we knew we had picked a great place when we were some of the only tourists there....yummy!!!! we were told it done in the "traditional hungarian style"...i am not really sure what that means exactly, but it was comfortable and cute place that we really liked..

one of my favorite stops on this trip was the statue park...this is a spot outside of town, where hungarians have placed all of the statues left from the communist era....its a crazy place...russian music is playing, and the communist statues are all around a red star in the middle of the park...they also have a replica of the "communist" car most people had during that time...here you can see me with one of the larger statues...it reminds me a bit of the statue brought to fremont, seattle...i hear tht one is still for sale...if you have never seen it...you should look it up...its wild...a communist statue from russia, in seattle...anyway, i think it pretty amazing the way how the hungarians have "embraced" this portion of their history...and state they will never revert to what they once had to endure...

another aspect of hungary is their rememberance of aspects of the holocaust....the picture above is taken on the banks of the danube river...what you are looking at are pairs of metal shoes representing hungarians who were lined up and shot along the banks of the danube at the beginning of the holocaust...its a stunning monument, like the one at the huge jewish synagogue, to remember an awful part of history....what is most impressive is that history blends with contemporary throughout all of budapest...below you can see the holocaust memorial at the synagogue...

this memorial is a wonderful combination of honor and rememberance...it is breath-taking in person...i just loved it...the weeping willow is metal and on each of the leaves are names of the jews who were killed during the holocaust....just stunning...the synagogue itself is also stunning...and huge!!!! you can tour the building and the grounds...and there is a small museum attached to the site as well....the hstorical representation is amazing here...

another aspect of budapest i really liked was the metro system...actually all of their mass transit seemed quite impressive...and organized and as you can see above, really CLEAN!!! this was the metro stop we used everyday as it was right down the street from where we were renting the apt...it was called hosok tere...not really sure how to pronounce this as hungarian doesn't use the same basic sounds as the english language...so it was quite hard to follow...

the picture above is of the lady of freedom in budapest....she is located at the top of hill on the buda side - although all of the buda side seems to be a hill....she is located next to the citadel overlooking the city and provides a great shot of the danube...she towers over everything and is a great landmark...and as you can tell we had an amazing day to climb up and visit her....

the final shot from budapest i will leave you with is me smokin hookah....yes, you can find it everywhere these days :) it is from the last night we were in town....if you can't tell from my entries, i loved budapest, and i am hoping to get there again sometime in 2007...i would highly recommend staying in budapest to anyone...its an absolutely lovely, well planned city that will bring a smile to anyone's face....i hope the pictures here do it some justice....i will be continuing with pictures from bucharest and romania in the next update....i have fallen quite behind in things i have been doing in the country i am living in...i have now had two sets of visitors and have explored even further parts of romania....more on this in the next update...til then...have a good one :)